by Will Self
The problems Simon had with the simple tests became clearer when they moved on to the harder exercises. His eye–hand coordination, his vision, his hearing, all were slightly impaired. There was no evidence of any actual cognitive dysfunction, but somewhere between Simon Dykes’s brain and the rest of his body an attenuation, or diminution, was occurring. He would keep misplacing a digit, a letter, or a figure. When Busner or Bowen pointed these errors out to him, Simon could immediately see them, but when presented with a task to all intents and purposes the same, he would make the same mistake again.
Busner also gave Simon a very limited thirty-two-question Stanford-Binet test, devised for schizophrenics, and a similarly circumscribed MMPI, or Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Simon sat, his shabby fur oozing with sweat as he worked his way through these sheets of questions with only one sane answer. He neither asked Busner what they were for, nor showed any animation, except when querying those parts of the tests that cut against the grain of his delusion. With the MMPI, for example, there was an entire section dealing with mating, a section Simon passed over save for ringing each instance of the sign ‘mating’, and placing a question mark next to it.
Busner and Jane Bowen looked on in novocal, using the opportunity for an extended grooming session. Busner slid gratefully from his chair to the floor and laid his head in Bowen’s lap. She worked her way carefully over his head fur, his neck fur, and after removing his jacket and shirt all the way down his back fur, giving little smacks of her lips the while. She popped some of the gleanings – mucus, dried sweat twistles, crumbs, food particles – in her mouth; and made a small pile of others – paper bitlets, plastic filaments, lice eggs, staples, scabs and winnets – on the linoleum. When she was done, they reversed their positions and Busner got to work on her back. He snuffled and grunted as his lips palped and his fingers combed. Finding himself surprised by the quantities of medicaments mixed up in Bowen’s sleek, dark fur, he inparted between her shoulders, ‘I shall have to watch what I’m doing here, Jane, or I’ll find myself sedated!’, at which she heaved with soundless laughter.
Simon finished the last question and threw his pencil in the air. It fell to the floor with a minor beat. Busner heaved himself upright. ‘ “H’huuu” are you done then, Mr Dykes?’ he signed, one hand cradling his testicles.
‘ “Hooo” yes, I am. I’m done, done-fucking-in. Show me I’m mad now, Doc-tor human-muzzle “euch-euch”, show me …’ The artist’s fingers faltered – then fell signlent. There was shocked signless between the three apes that endured and endured, while Bowen expected an outburst from Busner, but none came. He merely regarded Simon quizzically, his eyebrow ridges deeply furrowed.
The ‘phone rang, Bowen answered it. She employed a toe to smooth some fur Busner had set against the part, while watching the chimp on the other end of the camera, then broke the connection with the same digit. ‘It’s the biotechnician down in the bowels –’
‘And “huu”?’ Busner’s ridges unfurrowed, rose.
‘They’re ready.’
‘Good, good. Very “grnn” good. That is quick. Tell me, Jane, was this your influence alone, or did Whatley have a part in it “huuu”?’
‘I’ve no image, Zack, I like to envision it was down to me. ’ She scratched her knees.
The patient, who during this exchange had remained squatting in novocal, now sparked up again and his fingers flew. ‘So “euch-euch” what about these reviews then “huuu”? Didn’t you sign I could look at them once I’d done your stupid tests “huu”? Now didn’t you, human-muzzle. Human-muzzle! Human-muzzle!’ Simon illustrated these insults by picking up one of the human masks and waving it in the muzzle concerned. Busner lost patience and swung on him, a roundhouse punch that sent Simon sprawling. The results were traumatic to observe. Simon crumpled up into a ball and began his odd, low-pitched keening, while his hands, half covering his anguished muzzle, shaped the signs, ‘You fucking bastard! You hit me! You bastard. You aren’t a fucking doctor – you’re a monster, a fucking monster!’ and then he began to scream in earnest, “Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh!”
Busner and Bowen exchanged wary looks. This was not the response to physical admonishment either would have expected from a psychotic patient – whatever the nature of his delusion. Busner had seen Simon’s case notes, but he still found the lack of physicality in the chimp, of basic reflexes, difficult to handle. Even with his many years of clinical experience, the atypical behaviour wrongfooted his impulse to offer reassurance. It was left to Jane Bowen to squat down by Simon, grunting gently, ‘ “Grnnn-gru-nnn-hooo” Simon, I’m sorry, but you really shouldn’t challenge Dr Busner’s authority in this way, it can’t help matters –’
‘AllIwan, allIwan –’ he fumbled.
‘What’s that “huuu”? Simon “huu”?’
‘AllIwans t’see them. Thass all.’
‘See what, Simon “huu”?’
‘The reviews, the fucking reviews.’
‘Simon, Simon “gr-unnn” Simon, please, “chup-chupp” I’m sorry. You’re still my patient, you know – and a very interesting patient too. Here they are …’ Busner crouched by Simon on the biffed and battered linoleum. He so wanted to take the chimp’s head in his hands, to cradle it, to pressure it, to offer proper, chimp-mane comfort, but Bowen’s look warned him off. ‘Please accept that what I “grnnn” did to you I would have done to any patient who behaved in this fashion. Now, Dr Bowen and I need to have a look at your test results. It’s boring stuff for you – very technical. What I suggesture is that you go back to your room, have some third lunch, read your reviews – I think you’ll find them entwining, if not altogether pleasing – and in the meantime we’ll go over the results. We can reconvene in an hour or so … “huuu”? … What d’you sign?’
In the staff canteen Bowen grabbed a corner table. It meant they could go through the x-rays and scans without a light box. Busner brought the trays from the serving hatch, Bowen the buff envelopes and buffer folders. They spread out the sections of Simon Dykes on the table top and dived in. ‘I don’t want to do this systematically, Jane,’ Busner gestured, while cramming an individual steak and kidney pie into his mouth. ‘I just want to look at the things as rapidly as possible, form an impressionistic diagnosis. If you notice anything – sing out!’
Bowen rubbed her thighs together, feeling her fur comb itself, hookless Velcro. Oh to be licking a pink, damp swelling at this moment, to feel deliciously hairy teats swell in her mouth like ripe – Enough! She shoved the image aside. Her nestmate, Rachel, wouldn’t be in oestrus again for another, frustrating week, better to give the finger to the thought, rather than visualise fingering her.
‘ “Wraaa-hoo” my God! Look at this!’ Busner was holding up one of the slide sheets with the MRI sections on it. ‘Look! He’s got a definite focal signal hyperintensity, here, here … and here! Several of them, right along the Sylvian fissure. “Hoo-hoo-hoo” I never really thought we’d turn up such obvious organic damage at all. And his frontal lobe doesn’t look right either … No “hooo” it certainly doesn’t –’
‘It’s swollen, isn’t it “huu”?’
‘Horribly swollen. If I didn’t “grnnn’yum” know better “grnnn’yum” I’d sign this was hydrocephalus –’
‘It would square with the other wet bits, “huu” wouldn’t it?’
‘If that’s what they are – maybe they aren’t. Pass me the PET scans, I want to try and correlate them.’
While the MRI scans were colourless, like ultrasound, pictures defining the shape of the brain in shades of grey, rendering it as massy and weirdly differentiated as a ball of fluff recovered from a blocked vacuum cleaner, the positive emission tomography produced fantastic coloured slides, more akin to heat-sensitive satellite imaging. Simon Dykes’s brain, as revealed by PET, was a lurid collision of deep blues, dark purples and virulent greens. And as the cerebellum was palette-shaped in outline, the effect was as of observing some arty-facts
, or analogies of colour sensitivity.
This is what Dykes himself might have thought on seeing the nuclear mapping of his mind, but Busner, despite his vaunted artistry, looked at the PET scan with technical eyes, noting the disjunction between the dark, depressed shades on the left-hand side of the brain, and the lurid flashes of red, yellow and orange on the right-hand side. “Grnnn-grnnn” he grunted as he perused them. ‘ “Grnn-grnnn” look at this, Jane – this certainly correlates with Dykes’s behaviour, even if it doesn’t explain it. You did an EEG on him, didn’t you “huu”?’
‘Yes. The results are here in the folder. ’ She footed it over.
‘ “HooGraa” as I expected. There’s this massive burst of electrical activity on the right-hand side of his brain – really quite universal – but the left is terribly depressed, terribly depressed. That explains why our chimp is so cack-handed; and possibly why he has these extraordinary delusions. It’s by no mean inconsistent – although not altogether characteristic – of a multi-infarct dementia “hooo”. As for these FSIs, well, they sort of blanket that central cortical region, don’t they, but as the MRI shows, they must in fact be spread throughout the brain “h’huu”?’
‘You don’t think they’re tumours of some kind, do you, Zack “huu”?’
‘Good point “chup-chupp”. They don’t have the right tints for wet patches, but on the other foot they’re by no means solid. No, I think they’re some sort of shadowing, perhaps lesions or scarring. Foot me the MRIs again.’
While Busner pored over the slides, Jane Bowen turned her attention to the X-rays; and now it was her turn to exclaim “HoooGraa!” Every chimp in their section of the canteen turned to see who was pant-hooting.
‘Keep it down! Keep it down!’ Busner signed frantically. ‘We don’t want any fusion over these “wraaa”!’ He warned off some of the more inquisitive chimps, who nearly had their muzzles on the table. ‘What is it, Jane “huu”?’
‘Here, look here on this transverse image of Dykes’s head. Here, below the jaw.’
Busner, heedless of his own warning, took the X-ray and held it up to the sunlit window. A waggish surgeon some fifteen feet away from them could see the shape of the cranium, and reacted as excitedly as Jane Bowen. He burst into loud, tooth-clacking laughter. ‘ “H’hee-hee-clak-clak” whatever next, Busner! Got yourself a human to lead around on a chain now, have you!’
Busner didn’t rise to this. He dropped the X-ray back on the table, and inparted his colleague’s leg, ‘He’s got no simian shelf, has he, Jane “huu”?’
‘No, Zack, he doesn’t appear to.’
‘Could it be the result of some kind of accident “huu”?’
‘Unlikely – I’d sign.’
‘A congenital defect then “huu”?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or perhaps he is human after all!’
… why Dykes feels it necessary so crassly to manipulate the consciences – and even the stomachs – of his public is beyond the scope of this review, but there is something both crude and self-seeking about these paintings that takes them down a peg from being true examples of art, to mere caricature …
… Dykes, whose World of Bears caused such a buzz of interest when it was bought for the Tate’s permanent collection last year, disappoints mightily with this slipshod series of exploitative tableaux. Having abandoned the perverse formalism of his earlier, more sculptural work, he proffers in its place the formal perversity of his painting …
“… an infant, burning in mid-air, is at the centre of a canvas that makes a mockery of the suffering of real chimpanzees, in the most horrific London transport disaster in recent history. Why Dykes feels he has a right to do this is beyond …
… no sign of the artist himself, there was a great deal of screaming and mating among the assembled critics and art-world types. Dykes’s consort, Sarah Peasenhulme, appeared briefly, but was hustled away by Tony Figes and his coterie …
… interest that perhaps wouldn’t have been shown were it not for the disappearance of the artist, who is rumoured to have suffered a total mental collapse in the week preceding the opening …
… he’s mad – and she’s bad, chimp. Swelling bigger than her head and not averse to receiving some ‘constructive advice’ from prominent bonobo installation artist Ken Braithwaite. The two of them were seen after the private view, more down than up on the stairs of the Sealink Club …
The madchimp in question gathered together the leaves of photocopying paper that he had spread out on the institutional grey cover of his nest. He formed them into a loose ball, by scrunching one sheet up tightly and then wrapping the others round it. Even though he was distracted and enraged by what he had read, Simon still found himself appreciating how, when he willed them, his fingers responded with more exactness, more subtle dexterity, than he could remember from the time before his breakdown.
He regarded the fingers as they shaped and tucked. He’d never really noticed how hairy the backs of his hands were before – nor his thighs for that matter. Was it age, or some awful side-effect of the drugs they were giving him? The monkey denoted Bowen signed they’d taken him off the Prozac, but Simon couldn’t believe this had had any impact on his mental state – unless it was to provoke these delusions of a topsy-turvy world. He tooth-clacked mirthlessly, tossed the balled reviews in the air and without bothering to see where they fell, curled himself up into a ball as well, and began to rock back and forth, back and forth.
Some things didn’t change. The world might be ruled by apes – be a planet of apes, but a moiety of them were still odious, grubbing hacks. Odious, grubbing hacks. Simon didn’t simply remember the resentments – he felt them corroding his gut, as if his gut were a slopping sump full of battery acid, and this anchored him to the perversities of now more than any shrink could have done – human or chimp.
He groaned, clutching his shins. Were the paintings now of apes? Apes burning, apes falling, apes bleeding? Could this be true? And Sarah, what they’d written about Sarah and Ken Braithwaite, could that be true as well? Why don’t I feel more jealous? When she was human I wanted her body to be exclusively mine. I wanted to have sole use of her smoothness, sole occupancy of her wetness, sole rights to her moans. And now the image of some oiled shaft sinking inside her …
… the dream. Me moving out of her. Being extruded from her. She was sitting in a tree. Hunched up. Biting at the cord that tied us. Biting with sharp canines. In the dream – she was a chimpanzee. She was.
Whatley and Gambol picked at salads in the Café Rouge across the road from the hospital. Given Gambol’s acknowledged presence in the department, there no longer seemed any necessity for them to be secretive. He twined his fingers in leaves of rocket and radicchio, then signed from this thicket, ‘I have something I think may “grnnn” interest you, Dr Whatley.’
‘ “H’huuu” yes?’ the consultant countersigned around a wedge of avocado. ‘You know, Gambol, that I have no intention of an alliance with you unless it proves productive – and quickly! “Aaaaa” –’ He broke off to call the waiter.
‘ “H’huuu”? Everything all right here, gentlemales?’ The waiter had a white apron tied tightly around his waist. His white shirt had bright red buttons. His head fur was teased and dyed into a red quiff. Whatley and Gambol looked at him with undisguised contempt. ‘Fine, as far as it goes,’ Whatley gestured, ‘but I ordered some garlic bread “euch-euch-huu”?’
‘Coming right up, sir. ’ The waiter bounded away towards the kitchen, and meeting one of his colleagues en route they tumbled over each other in a precisely coordinated mêlée of limbs. Whatley grunted, turned back to his salad, and found that it had acquired a covering in the form of a shiny folder, the kind used by corporate entities to port reports and other documents. ‘What’s this, Gambol “huuu”?’ Whatley eyed the thing, then picking it up scratched his head fur with one of its sharp laminated corners.
‘Please take a look,’ Gambol countersigned.
‘I think you’ll find it very interesting – and entirely relevant.’
Jane Bowen took a pant-hoot from George Levinson in her office. ‘ “HoooH’Graa”’ Dr Bowen, how are you today “huu”?’ He was, even at this range, suffering from an obvious hangover. Sportive sunglasses teetered precariously on his high nasal bridge. His long, brown sideburns were dirty, still encrusted with bits of last night’s fun. ‘ “HoooH’Graa” not too bad, Mr Levinson.’
‘Did you enjoy the opening last night “huu”?’
‘Well enough, well enough – not really my sort of thing.’
‘I “euch-euch” wouldn’t sign it was altogether representative of private views. I suppose you saw some of the fights that broke out “huuu”?’
‘The beginning of one. Was fusion eventually reached?’
‘ “Euch-euch” well, not exactly. Show me, has Simon seen this morning’s papers “huu”?’ He worried his side-burn fur, twisting it this way and that between fiddling fingers, as if this cheekborne dangleberry were the artist himself.
‘I believe he’s reading them now. We’ve had a fairly successful morning. We got him out of the secure room and did the tests we wanted –’
‘And “huu”?’
“Hoogrnn.”
‘Dr Bowen “huu”?’
‘ “Hoogru-nn” I’m afraid I’m not entirely at liberty to delineate them, Mr Levinson – as I’m sure you appreciate.’
Jane Bowen hoped Levinson would hold back – but knew full well he wouldn’t. He goggled at her from behind the sunglasses for a while. Even though she couldn’t see the dealer’s eyes, Jane knew they would be bedded down in hammocks of enpurpled veins.
Eventually his fingers twitched. ‘The thing is …’
